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[karenhewessuber]

When your intuitive collage predicts future gifts of chocolate from Las Vegas that will undoubtedly make your children happy, you have to stop and wonder.

[karenhewessuber]

For Those Who Spoke

"But for Those Who Spoke For Us, Shall we speak but comfortably and quietly In the sight of things we will no longer claim our own in our shame," that she asks.

Written on the gravestones of a recent image I intuited, these words bend light in my mind and heart, asking me where I need to go. They make me wonder what the same words might speak to you. How will they permutate in your heart and mind?

Process art has become my passion.  “Process art” (...as opposed to “product art” where the goal of your work is the end product...) doesn’t ask us to deliver anything but our own intuition and collective consciousness through our hands.  In this daring exploration, we allow ourselves to tap the well of all that has been, is, and will be.  In the phrase above, captured by the graves of heroines past, I hear a challenge asking if we are still speaking our truths. Have we honored what has been claimed and fought for before we inherited the torch? Do we continue to honor ourselves and our keep with the fierce respect we deserve? Do we hear our ancestors’ proud voices still reverberating courage and vision to propel our future? These are the things I hear my creative-intuitive-self being asked to answer. What is the ugly truth? This is where “The Relevant Revolution” calls.

[karenhewessuber]

My first Zine: The Yellow Wallpaper Project.org presents, “The Relevant Revolution.” Workbook styled fun for you to work out your creative wiggles. Join me for more process-fun that you ever thought you'd have in 10 pages.

Starring Zanz Grrl.

www.theyellowwallpaperproject.org

For now, I can mail you a copy the old fashioned way. (*wink*)

[karenhewessuber]

Happy Mother's Day, yo. ...from Zanz Grrl...

[karenhewessuber]

Yes, I am.

[karenhewessuber]

For a dear friend... gettin’ dicey.

[karenhewessuber]

My newest eZine and Women’s Art Collective adventure... Art by women for women... the Relevant Revolution. It begins.

[karenhewessuber]

Materials: found turkey feather, bottle of decayed india ink, water, Mother and Son

-KHS & ACS, 041715

[karenhewessuber]

Which then begs the question, 'What isn't ART?'

KHS, 041715

[karenhewessuber]

Jamestown, circa Sept. ’14.  Or maybe Sept. ‘77-’14 might be more apropos? Who lines shoes to the beat of the fallen shelf? Frames it a masterpiece? S/he who loveth her work, all else is naught.

[karenhewessuber]

“What we all learn we won’t learn the same at the one time at the same mark drawing the same one end.

What we all learn we don’t all learn even if it’s same or actual, our lenses bending our one light.

What we all learn we can’t all learn now try harder now see less.

But what we all learn we do.”

(KHS, 040615)

[karenhewessuber]

“Progeny” - mixed on matte board (KHS, ‘08)

What is bore from the seed of the shell, the two shall mate and their potential be greater than the sum of their equal parts. The braid, my own growing life.

(Part I in series of intuitive collage project.)

[karenhewessuber]

.winter’s walk.

[karenhewessuber]

The Bird Funeral

(*Good Tiny Big Love, 3/28/09)

I am trying to find a way to stave off the morning rush-routine to get the Boy to school when the Boy exclaims, "Mom!  A bird just hit the window!  We have to go save him!!!"

Out into the misty morning we tromp in our rubber shoes through the grass and the landscaping, finding what I believe is the most perfect juvenile warbler you've ever seen lying in the bark mulch, immobilized save for its tiny breaths.  Feet up in the air like tiny sticks, wings folded neatly at its sides, I scoop up the tender, warm bird and hand him into my 6-year-old's gentle, wanting hands.

The bird's belly is pure white.  The back is olive with hints of mustard.  It has a beautifully tapered beak, and its head is flopping suspiciously from side to side when my son rolls him over to inspect him.  Still, the bird's eyes are blinking with it's tiny third, filmy eyelid.  I point out the details to my son.  The bird, either in brave effort or in fear, is trying to lift its head - it looks like it's inspecting us back.  At first I'm convinced the bird's a gonner, then I wonder again.  Trying to be hopeful for the little flier, I tell my son you never know: the bird might make it.  After all, s/he looks like s/he's trying....

Another child comes out the door to inspect the situation.  After plenty of instruction, Ms. Toddler is handed the still-breathing bird, though the Boy and I have both noticed that the once imperceptible heartbeat of the bird is now shaking its entire body.  We are caught in the moment of admiration and hope for nature's perfection right now.  A handoff is choreographed to return the bird to the Boy's hands, and somewhere... somewhere just in between those moments - between their four hands - the bird passes.  By the time the bird is back with the Boy, its eyes have gone glazed and its feathers are no longer smooth.  The proud little breath has ceased.

"But how do you know it's dead?....  It doesn't look dead."  What does death look like?  What does it look like to them?  To me?  I explain.  See?  The life force is missing.  Or is it?  I handle the bird again, inspecting it closely.  Apart from the obvious - the eyes, the lack of breath, the lack of "puff" - the bird is still warm, still flexible.  It still FEELS alive.  You can even feel its presence still in its body.  When does something die?

Mom takes the lead, now.  I find a box - a special box that normally holds some inspirational cards I crafted awhile back - and we empty the box and lay the bird inside.  After all, we have "important" things to do.  School (which we are now blissfully late for), errands, music class, shuttling,...  We reconvene around 3:45 to inspect the bird; This time the bird is dead.

No one wants to participate in the burial, now.  The fascination is gone for the children.  But I honor my word to them to honor the bird as part of the cycle of life and death, and I go out to bury the bird so the earth can reclaim it.  I have improper tools, and the hole ends up being smallish.  The Boy had found a rock that morning so I have a marker.  I mumble a quiet word of thanks, somehow ridiculously afraid of saying my eulogy out loud in my own backyard, and brace myself ever so slightly to pick up the now-dead creature.  Scoop.  S/he is now hard to touch.  Like wood.  Like hardened glue.  Like death.  Eyes sunken, the feathers are a memory of flight, a decoration, and bear no resemblance to the creature that lived.  The bird's body seems to be just a vehicle.

I lay the bird inside the tiny grave.  There's something else inside the box that catches my eye.  Three tiny pieces of paper are in the bottom, remnants of my craft project.  I pick up the longest: "Release all your fear."         I put it next to the bird.         The next?   "Open your heart."  In next to the bird goes that one.      "Be here," says the last........    "I am," I think.

I take more pause than is necessary now.  It is beautiful: the bird with its organic, soft lines and the tiny, rectangular messages I have found are a living art.  More than that, I have been presented with an amazing gift.  It is a message that cannot be mistaken.  I think of letting the tears come to me, to release the fear I have been carrying - to open my heart.       I resist.

The ground cover goes in carefully.  The marker is set.  A moment of internal thankfulness radiates out of my core into the universe for having reminded me of these things.  I put them on my short term to-do list and go back to the house...  to wash my hands.

Maybe tomorrow I will finish releasing all my fear.  But I thank the universe for reminding me today that I am going to get there.

[karenhewessuber]

... pause at the labyrinth ...

[karenhewessuber]

The Labyrinth

"I am blessed for the experiences that make me who I am.  I am blessed for the experiences that make me who I am.  I am blessed for the experiences that make me who I am.  I am blessed for the experiences that make me who I am."

There are so many wonderful things about my daughter having started preschool two weeks ago.  She is IN her element, and each time one of the kids matriculates to the next level of something, a piece of life is unfolding for us all.  For me, my daughter beginning preschool means I have to surrender a little to let her go: in return I get a little bit of me back to me.  Enter the labyrinth.

It's a small one: about 20 feet in diameter.  Nothing fancy.  Some flags stuck in the ground under a smallish grouping of trees on the edge of a semi-developed block near a busy road.  The trees near the entrance have some ribbons hung by well-wishers and labyrinth makers alike.  The path is narrow and pretty well worn, the weeds are abundant.  Nothing fancy.  But this "nothing fancy" is my 10 minutes, three times a week.  Baby in tow, I go into the circle.  Around the circle.  Follow the path.  Draw to center.  Breathe.  Empty.  Return.  Around the circle.  And out.  Back, but not the same.

I needed this: I needed the pause that the labyrinth offers.  I've been running from something, and I was beginning to think I was getting pretty good at it.  I've been running from something on the inside, and running on the outside to cover the internal running.  My mind has been a blur, my heart has been burdened.  I've been swamped in thought, and inescapable self-induced drudgery.  (Eeeeeeewwwwww..... )  Worse yet, I've been working to force things in my life, fearful that if I don't CREATE what's around me, I might have to surrender to whatever the universe present me.  Ironically, surrendering to the universe is exactly what I want to be doing.

The labyrinth, sitting quietly under the snow, melting slowly to the spring wind, sprouting hopeful shoots of grass on a trodden path to cushion the first feet of the season... the labyrinth has been waiting all this time.  It's a holding space that waits for the return of those who will enter to seek - not to run, but to boldly step into the path and to dare to enter into the realm where evolution and revolution are possible.  I know now that I am doing my path justice by taking my 10 minutes, three times a week, to enter into that realm.  I know I am moving forward.  Slowly.  Finally.  It has been a long spring.

Can you feel the tiny turning?  Can you feel the tiny changes that spur us to grow?  The big things, yes.  They are easy to recognize - even forced upon us when we are most unwilling to change or learn.  But the TINY changes.  They are infinitesimally small units of movement in the interior of who we are - tiny, energetic switches that open here and there when we dare to put ourselves in the circle, on the path, and to let go.  Those tiny changes are real.  I think they are more significant than we realize.   Now, I am choosing to acknowledge their significant.  I know that this is my "out" of where I've been lately.  This is my opportunity to let go and to receive the gifts: be they tiny or large, they are all Great.

Peace to you all.  Internal motion, and a free heart full of tiny possibilities.

(*Good Tiny Big Love, 03/24/09)

[karenhewessuber]

‘Mom, I have to tell you something...’

(*Good Tiny Big Love, 3/17/09)

"Mom, I have to tell you something...," he begins, "and you're probably not going to like it."

Hm.

He's six.   He's standing there in his blue jeans, water bottle carabiner'd to the belt loop, expressive hands flailing as he speaks.  Sometimes, he tells me, he gets mad at me.  He doesn't like it when I "talk mean" to him and it makes him say things when nobody can hear: he just goes to another room and says things like, "I don't like you," "I'm sick of you," and the dreaded "I hate you."  The whole time he's telling me this, I just want to scoop him up and hug him: he's so d*mn cute in his jeans.

Oh, there's more.  This happens to him with lots of people that he loves.  When we "talk mean" or "act mean" to him, all the love DRAINS away from him, and he just feels angry.  Then, after it's all over, the love DRAINS BACK into him and he loves me/us again.  (Now, I beckon to him with outstretched arms and he cozies in with me on the couch.  Here it gets juicy.)  Sometimes, he even tells his shadow that he doesn't like him. He's even told it to his reflection.  (I double check to make sure he doesn't really *hate* himself.  He doesn't.  He's just talking to the pieces of him that follow him around during the day.)  I am smitten: completely in love with this boy, now.  How can you not love him for what he is saying?  He is sooooo right.

His conversation is long and involved.  I try SO hard to remember all the fine points, but I'm dizzy in my own thoughts, too.  I think of the moments when I've seen him wander away from me talking to himself with his flailing hand and head tilt.  I think of the moments when I "don't like" somebody that I love and I'm talking to myself.  I think of how it feels when the love DRAINS away.... how it feels when it DRAINS BACK.  He is so right.

I'm always fighting the good fight as a parent.  Somedays I win: I figured out a clever, fun way to teach batting and get the throw rug clean tonight.  Somedays I lose: I lose my cool because somebody WON'T FLOSS and they end up crying in bed.  Somedays, it's a draw.  But, as I'm sitting listening to my son emote on the topic of having to deal with all these conflicting emotions about the people he loves, I think to myself, "I must try harder.  I must keep trying."  And I tell him that.  I make him the promise: I will always do my best to keep the love from draining, even if I have to tell him something is bad or wrong.  I ask him to do the same.  How hard can it be?...